We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Firewall and Sonicwall TZ based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Of the two solutions, Sonicwall TZ seems to be the more desirable product because of its easy deployment, great set of features, and affordable price.
"The most important features with FortiGate are the web filter and application controls. We can control our internet usage and use the web filter for application purposes."
"FortiGate has a strong security topic which allows all of the Fortinet devices to communicate and share information which makes their security more powerful."
"From the firewall perspective, the rules and policies are very sufficient and easy to use."
"The performance is good."
"The solution is easy to configure and maintain remotely."
"The application control features, such as Facebook blocking and Spotify blocking, are the most valuable."
"The security features are about the best that I've seen anywhere."
"The security on offer is very good."
"The command line is the same as it is on the Cisco iOS router."
"It is one of the fastest solutions, if not the fastest, in the security technology space. This gives us peace of mind knowing that as soon as a new attack comes online that we will be protected in short order. From that perspective, no one really comes close now to Firepower, which is hugely valuable to us from an upcoming new attack prevention perspective."
"There are no issues that we are aware of. It does its job silently in the background."
"It protects our network."
"It's got the capabilities of amassing a lot of throughput with remote access and VPNs."
"VPN load balancing has been particularly essential for my connections to integrate via multiple time zones."
"Cisco Secure Firewall's security solutions, advanced malware protection, and DDoS communication are very good."
"Firewall help with cybersecurity resilience. I really like this Cisco product. It's user-friendly. I don't like some other vendors. I've tried those in the past. Cisco is pretty easy. A caveman could do it."
"The VPN is quite useful for us, as well as the ATP."
"It does what it says it is going to do."
"The most valuable features are unified threat management which provides security intelligence and the VPN for both site-to-site and remote access."
"The solution is priced fairly and competitively."
"Offers the right amount of control without being incredibly convoluted and frustrating."
"The most valuable feature is content filtering and app control."
"The solution's VPN is very good for stability and detecting threats."
"Technical support is good."
"The user interface could be improved."
"FortiGate is really good. We have been using it for quite some time. Initially, when we started off, we had around 70 plus devices of FortiGate, but then Check Point and Palo Alto took over the place. From the product perspective, there are no issues, but from the account perspective, we have had issues. Fortinet's presence in our company is very less. I don't see any Fortinet account managers talking to us, and that presence has diluted in the last two and a half or three years. We have close to 1,500 firewalls. Out of these, 60% of firewalls are from Palo Alto, and a few firewalls are from Check Point. FortiGate firewalls are very less now. It is not because of the product; it is because of the relationship. I don't think they had a good relationship with us, and there was some kind of disconnect for a very long time. The relationship between their accounts team and my leadership team seems to be the reason for phasing out FortiGate."
"For the migration, everyone has a firewall in use and I am selling Fortinet. Typically, I am replacing another firewall. Previously, there was a tool available to convert configurations from one firewall, such as Palo Alto, to Fortinet, but this tool is no longer free. If it could be made free again, it would be very beneficial."
"The UI could be improved."
"In the next release, I would like to see the interface simplified to be more user-friendly."
"Bandwidth usage in reporting could be improved for Fortinet FortiGate."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a stable solution. However, my issue is the performance only. When I use all the profiles, this affects the performance. From the beginning, I should have had a better sizing of the box."
"The routing capability on the FortiGate devices has room for improvement."
"UTM features would be nice or some NextGen features."
"The IPS module is combined with the main operating system."
"Cisco ASA should be easier to use. It is a bit tough to navigate and see what is going on."
"The scalability is a bit limiting, to be honest. In terms of when you look to changing landscape in terms of threats, I think to me, my personal it's a bit limiting."
"There is limited data storage on the appliance itself. So, you need to ship it out elsewhere in order for you to store it. The only point of consideration is around that area, basically limited storage on the machine and appliance. Consider logging it elsewhere or pushing it out to a SIEM to get better controls and manipulation over the data to generate additional metrics and visibility."
"We had an event recently where we had inbound traffic for SIP and we experienced an attack against our SIP endpoint, such that they were able to successfully make calls out... Both CTR, which is gathering data from multiple solutions that the vendor provides, as well as the FMC events connection, did not show any of those connections because there was not a NAT inbound which said either allow it or deny it."
"The SSL VPN is, and always has been, painful to configure and the Java plugin does not guarantee a uniform deployment."
"The access layer of this solution could be improved in terms of the way the devices interconnect with our network. We need to be able to analyze the traffic between the different interconnection in these areas."
"Sometimes there is a glitch between the network connection. Last time, something happened on our IP phone, the SonicWall team did some updates to fix the issue. However, glitches happen very rarely. I did not experience any other types of problems."
"An additional feature that I would like to see is reporting that includes metrics to give me more information about the number of viruses that it has actually detected and interrupted."
"I would like to see more integration with other platforms."
"The products' reporting can be improved."
"The solution's pricing could be made cheaper."
"If the operation increases and the bandwidth consumption increases, it does not perform as per the expectations."
"In terms of what needs to be improved, I would say better load balancing and data filtering."
"SonicWall TZ can improve the UI application and when you create any net policies or any new policy, it will not sync or work properly."
Cisco Secure Firewall is ranked 4th in Firewalls with 112 reviews while SonicWall TZ is ranked 11th in Firewalls with 19 reviews. Cisco Secure Firewall is rated 8.2, while SonicWall TZ is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Firewall writes "Includes multiple tools that help manage and troubleshoot, but needs SD-WAN for load balancing". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SonicWall TZ writes "Highly acceptable on a small scale, straightforward out the box installation, with a good price point". Cisco Secure Firewall is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Azure Firewall, whereas SonicWall TZ is most compared with Sophos XG, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX, SonicWall NSa and WatchGuard Firebox. See our Cisco Secure Firewall vs. SonicWall TZ report.
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